Between the Wasteland and the Sky
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: It's hard to forget a nightmare that's true. [Peeta x Katniss]


**Title:** Between the Wasteland and the Sky  
**Genre:** Romance / Hurt/Comfort  
**Rating:** T  
**Pairing:** Peeta x Katniss  
**Spoilers:** Mockingjay  
**Summary:** It's hard to forget a nightmare that's true.  
**Word Count:** 942  
**Warnings:** Violence

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Summary belongs to K.A. Applegate. Title is a _Trigun_ episode.

**A/N:** Tragedy and fluff?

* * *

She awakens screaming more nights of the week than she actually sleeps through. What she sees are flashes, moments, glimpses into a brief period of her life. But those months resonate so strongly within her that they feel like years and years and years.

\- a young girl, her face surrounded by flowers –

\- berries, thick and dark and fat, and filled with promises and death, held in a hand as familiar to her now as her own –

\- the scent of roses, thick and cloying and overwhelming, not strong enough to cover the smell of blood –

\- Prim, Prim, Prim, gone, gone, gone –

\- Blood and explosions, death, friends, there then gone –

\- and always, always, those eyes – human eyes in animal faces, Mutts, friends, enemies, kill them – no! – they're people – Rue! –

She awakens screaming, her mind filled with those eyes, her mouth filled with the copper tang of blood where she'd bitten her tongue, her fists gripped white-knuckled in the sheets. For a moment, she is delirious. Did she waken herself with her own scream?

But no, there is a wide, calloused hand prying her fists loose, running fingers across a sweated brow, murmuring in a deep, rumbling voice, as smooth as icing. The words are nonsense, just words to fill the silence, to bring her back to the here and now. A hand slides under her, pulls her up until it can slide down the length of her spine, until he can pull her close and hold her tight, arms as strong as bonds of iron as they wrap around her. She sinks into the feeling, swallowing the terror, choking back the fear, trying to blink away the images.

But it is so, so hard. The Games – she grew up with them. There was not a year of her life she did not remember them, they went back so far even her grandmother couldn't remember a time before them. They were horror and violence and death – but she had expected it. Seeing it was terrible – a spear careening through a young girl's chest, watching people explode before your eyes – but it was expected. It was after, when people acted like it _normal_ that the unease began to churn in her stomach, began to make her see things, hear things, always think like a player. And after than even: seeing what people – _just people_ – could do to each other. Sacrifice children – _her sister!_ – for some cause, some sense of righteousness. It was too much. Something in her broke. If people were no different from the Gamemakers, if people in the Districts could be just as cruel as those in the Capitol, then what was the point, what was the difference?

Peeta was still murmuring against her hair, lips brushing across her temple, content to sit with her, even in the middle of the night, calming her until she was at ease again, until her mind was done rolling and churning and remembering. He knew what it was like. He woke just as often as her – lost and confused. Not knowing where he was, not knowing _who_ he was. Was he the Peeta who was a contest in the Games, Tribute and player and victor? Or was he the Peeta who was a Capital toy, mind raw and open and filled with lies? Real or not real? Sometimes when he woke he was still there in those moments, still hated Katniss' face on sight. He came to himself to find bruises on her cheeks and arms, knowing that he did that, that he had forgotten, not wanting to look into her face, to see the look in her eyes. But always, always he only finds relief that he is back here with her.

Real.

These are the moments that Katniss has begun to treasure, the ones here in the dark with just the two of them. It is easy, natural, there are no secrets between them. They have been with each other at the very worst points in their life, they know each other's secrets and fears and nightmares, what wakes them screaming and thrashing, what they see when those close their eyes. But here, there is only companionship – the softly whispered words to remind each other of other times, good times. An ugly orange cat with nine lives, a wedding, trinkets, Finnick's bright smile, Prim's bright eyes, her mother's laugh, Haymitch's humor.

She never thought, never imagined, that after the horror she had condensed into a few short years of her life, that she would be allowed to have this. A home, a husband, children. But more than any of those things, it's this. This closeness. She never imagined she could feel this with another person. She had never been close to people – not like this. There were no hugs or fleeting touches. She had no paramours, no serious ones, that she flirted or kissed. Gale and Prim were her closet companions, but they were never this. There was never this give and take between them like with Peeta. They were two halves, two victors together. Where one was darkness, the other was there to pull them back towards the light. They completed each other, made sure they were each whole.

It is only here, in these stolen moments in the dark, pre-dawn light, that either one of them feels real.


End file.
